Melanie was leaning in the master bedroom’s doorway when Kelsey came out. “You’re going to stay in here?” she asked casually, but Kelsey could see her hands were clenched in tight balls.
“Yeah. Why not?” Kelsey responded equally as casually. “No one else is using it, and I’ll be much more comfortable. Besides, I don’t think Mom and Dad would mind, do you?”
Melanie shook her head stiffly. Maybe she was kicking herself for not staking a claim on the room first. It probably hadn’t occurred to her because her room was so much nicer than Kelsey’s. If she had, Kelsey would’ve been happy to stay in the bedroom with the tapestry. “I’ll have to take one of the queen-size quilts to the Laundromat,” she said.
“I could do it,” Kelsey offered. “Or I could sleep with the twin-size quilt tonight. I really don’t care.” She bent down to scratch behind Sprocket’s ears and saw his tongue was hanging out in a doggy grin. She would need to set out a bowl of water for him soon. “So what is this thing of Mom’s you wanted to show me?” She tried to sound appropriately enthusiastic.
But Melanie’s eagerness seemed to have lessened somewhat. She was still staring into their parents’ bedroom as if Kelsey had desecrated it somehow. “Right.” Melanie slowly returned her attention to her sister, and Kelsey got the distinct impression she was being appraised. “It’s in my room,” she finally said and ducked into the doorway of the middle bedroom. “But we should probably sit down first.”
Kelsey sat in the wingback chair. Melanie sat on the bed, and Sprocket stretched out on the hardwood floor on his side.
“The first night I got here, I was cleaning the place, and it occurred to me that the Tree of Life tapestry probably hadn’t been taken down and cleaned in decades,” Melanie started. “So I was trying to figure out how best to get it off the wall, but it was really awkward and heavy, so I decided I’d better leave it for the time being. While I was doing that, though, I noticed something hidden behind it—a door.”
“A door?” Kelsey scooted forward in her chair, her curiosity piqued. “A door to what?”
Melanie sucked in a deep breath. “I thought at first it was just a closet. A really weird closet because it doesn’t have any clothes bars, hooks, or shelves, just a bench. And some of Mom’s things were in there. But then I pushed the door open again, and when I came out, well, everything was... different.”
Kelsey stood up and crossed the room to the wall hanging. She lightly gripped its edge with her right hand and drew it toward her. Sure enough, she saw the outline of a door with some kind of metal handle level with the wall. Her whole body tingled as she deliciously lived out her childhood fantasy of discovering something so secret, so mysterious that it had to be hidden away from the rest of the world: the overgrown, walled-off garden in The Secret Garden; the wardrobe leading to Narnia; or the clues Nancy Drew stumbled upon to help her solve her mysteries. She imagined stepping into the room to discover whatever belongings of their mom’s Melanie had unearthed—probably photo albums, journals, or maybe childhood keepsakes, nothing quite so magical as the classics of her childhood. But still, the thought was thrilling. She released the tapestry’s edge, and it fell back against the door with a soft slap.
“Be gentle with that,” Melanie said.
Kelsey rested her palm over one of the red birds. If it were real, it would have fit neatly into her cupped hand. “What do you mean, ‘everything was different’ when you came back out?”
“It’s so crazy that I can’t decide if I should just show you or if I should try to prepare you. I guess I would’ve appreciated being prepared, but I seriously doubt I would’ve believed anyone who tried to warn me.” Melanie pressed downward on the bed, as though she couldn’t decide if she should stand up or plant herself more firmly in place.
“Stop being so melodramatic and just let me look,” Kelsey teased. She pulled the tapestry away from the wall again and set to work on twisting the silver handle. But before she could turn it, Melanie’s hand stopped hers.
“Okay,” Melanie said. “But on one condition. We always go together. Never alone.”
Go where together? Inside the closet? Can’t we just haul the stuff out and pore over it at our leisure? Especially if it’s a cramped space. That seemed like a weird demand, but the suspense was killing Kelsey, so she nodded. Melanie released her hand, and Kelsey swiveled the circular latch the rest of the way. They squeezed inside.
Melanie reached overhead to turn on the light, and Kelsey was disheartened to see it was, in fact, just a closet, as Melanie had said, and not a particularly big one at that. And it had no boxes of long-lost keepsakes. The room was basically empty except for a wood-plank bench with a small pile of items stacked on one end.
Kelsey held up the cigarette pack. “Is this what you wanted to show me? Do you think Mom smoked without us knowing?” She sat down on the bench, feeling deflated.
“I don’t know,” Melanie said dismissively. “Maybe. Or it could be someone else’s. But that’s not what I wanted you to see. Come on. Let’s go back in the bedroom.”
“Already? But I thought you wanted to show me something in here.”
Melanie pursed her lips. “Kelsey, bear with me, okay? I’m trying to show you.”
Kelsey rolled her eyes but stood up and followed her sister back through the hidden door. Immediately, her gaze landed on the spot where Sprocket had been lying on the floor, but the little gray dog was gone. Maybe he’d gotten anxious when they’d disappeared into the closet and gone looking for her. She hoped he wasn’t off destroying furniture.
“Sprocket?” she called then noticed that the hardwood floor wasn’t bare anymore. It was covered by a shaggy white circular rug. Where the heck did Melanie get that from, and why didn’t it make an impression on me before? But everywhere her gaze landed, she found something different about the room. The vase of hydrangeas was missing, and in its place was a lamp with tassels dangling from its shade. The quilt was a solid pink instead of a patchwork blue and white. Notebooks and what looked like hardcover textbooks were stacked on the desk, and a red one-piece swimsuit and a beach towel were draped over the desk chair.
“Sprocket?” she called again.
“He’s not here,” Melanie said, stepping toward her. “But don’t worry. He’s just fine, I’m sure.”
Suddenly dizzy, Kelsey grabbed the back of the desk chair to steady herself. The swimsuit hanging there was damp, and she drew her hand away. “Where is he?”
“He’s in my bedroom, probably still fast asleep on the floor. But a better question would be: Where are we?” She gestured to the rug, the bedspread, and all the details Kelsey had only just cataloged. “This is going to sound incredible, but we’re in the past, Kelsey. Probably somewhere in the seventies. This is Mom’s bedroom when she was a girl. That’s her swimsuit. Those are her notebooks.”
Kelsey could only gape at her sister. “How do you know?”
“I’ve seen her. And Grandma Dot. And even Mrs. Fletcher as a girl. As far as I can figure it, the closet is some kind of time portal.”
“You’ve seen Mom? Where is she? Can we talk to her?” It was better than her childhood fantasies, better than The Secret Garden and The Chronicles of Narnia and Nancy Drew all wrapped up into one. It was a direct channel to her mom’s past, a way to speak to her mom one more time from beyond the grave. “Mom?” she shouted. She started toward the door, but Melanie grabbed her elbow.
“They can’t see or hear us,” she said. “And I don’t think we can move things or affect them in other ways. We’re basically like ghosts. All we can do is observe.”
“I still want to see her,” Kelsey said.
Just then, the sound of heavy footfalls came up the stairs. She froze in place.
“Dorothy?” a man called.
“In here,” a woman trilled back from what sounded like the turret room.
“Do you want to see Grandma and Grandpa first?” Melanie whispered, peeking out into the hallway.
> “I thought you said they couldn’t hear us,” Kelsey whispered back.
“They can’t. But it’s still kind of unnerving, isn’t it?”
It was deeply and truly unnerving. Kelsey’s hands were clammy as she followed her sister to the end of the hallway, where Grandma Dot—who had passed away two years earlier, after her daughter—was watering hanging plants, and Grandpa Jack—who had been deceased for at least twenty years—was sitting on the window seat in a pair of white shorts and boat shoes, one tanned, hairy leg crossed over the other. They looked so young, healthy, and alive.
Melanie stepped into the room and hovered on the periphery, but their grandparents didn’t bat an eyelash at her intrusion. Kelsey hung back, watching and listening from the doorway.
“I don’t like this,” Grandpa Jack said. “I think we should tell her she can’t accept the position.”
“Oh, Jack, don’t be silly.” Grandma Dot tipped the yellow plastic watering can into a plant with tiny white blooms. “She’s a good swimmer, and it will give some structure to her days. Plus she can tuck away some of the money to help pay for college. You always say you don’t want her loafing around the house all summer. This will be good for her.”
Grandpa Jack frowned at the sole of his boat shoe. “You’re right. I don’t like her loafing around the house, frittering her summer away with the Birdwells and the other yahoos around here. But from what I can tell, that’s just what the lifeguards at Harris Beach do, except in skimpy bathing suits, and I won’t have my daughter being ogled on some lifeguard stand by all of Lake Indigo. Why can’t she spend more time studying like Bobby? Or if she has to get a summer job, why not a proper one like Keith, who bags the groceries at Dern’s?”
“You would really want your daughter bagging groceries?” Grandma Dot raised her eyebrow, and for the first time, Kelsey realized how much her mother favored her. Old age and ill humor had weathered her grandma’s features, but in the middle-aged version of Grandma Dot, Kelsey could see that their thick brown hair, thin lips, and slightly upturned noses were exactly the same.
“Well, no.” He flicked an invisible piece of lint off his crisp white shorts. “But I don’t like the message this sends to our neighbors—that we’re permissive parents who approve of girls parading themselves around in bathing suits. I just wish Christine were more modest. And maybe more focused like Bobby. Here my brother went to all this trouble to get her those limnology textbooks, and has she cracked them just once since we got here?”
Grandma Dot set the watering can down and wiped her hands on her apron front. “Jack, she’s only sixteen, and it’s summer vacation. You know she was grateful to Jim for those books. But I think she also feels conflicted because of how you reacted to her wanting to study lakes and shipwrecks. You all but told her the only respectable majors women could choose were education or clerical studies.”
“Well, they are.” Grandpa Jack stood up to look out the window. “I think it’s pretty generous of us to plan to send her to college at all when she’s probably going to stop working once she’s married and settled down with a family anyway. God knows she’ll never want for money with the trust fund we’ve set up for her.” His spine suddenly went rigid, and he bent forward, his nose practically digging into the window screen. “Who’s that boy with Christine and Lavinia? I don’t think I recognize him.”
“It’s not Bruce Birdwell?” Grandma Dot asked with disinterest.
“No. I think I’d recognize our next-door neighbor, the king of the yahoos.”
“Mom’s out there?” Kelsey whispered to Melanie. She wanted to look out the window and catch a glimpse of her mom but was nervous about bumping into her grandparents and somehow alerting them to her presence.
Melanie edged carefully around Grandma Dot to get a better view. “Yes,” she said. “She’s a teenager!”
“Well, let’s go and see her up close,” Kelsey said, raising the volume of her voice a hair. She turned away from her grandparents and started to head for the stairs.
“What? You mean—go outside?”
“Sure. Why not?” She thumped down the stairs, trying to imagine her mom at sixteen. She had seen pictures, of course—posed photos of her next to Uncle Bob, the two of them bored and unsmiling, and pictures of her at Christmas, on her birthday, or in her polyester high school cap and gown. But to see her in the flesh, talking, smiling, walking, and swimming... Kelsey hardly processed the rest of the seventies décor in the house as she sped to the porch door. But once again, Melanie caught her first.
“Wait! Maybe we shouldn’t go outside,” she said, positioning herself between Kelsey and the door.
Kelsey could hear shouts and laughter coming from outside. One of those voices was her mom’s.
“We don’t know the rules of this time travel,” Melanie continued. “What if it just applies to the house, and if we leave it, we can’t come back?”
“Good point. You stay here, then, so you can let me back in.” She yanked at the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Oh no. Maybe Melanie was right, and the boundaries of the weird reality only extended to the edges of the house. How long will I have to wait for Mom to come back inside? She gave the door another forceful yank, and though it still didn’t open, her arm slipped through it, as if the solid wood were actually made of tissue paper. She turned back to widen her eyes at Melanie, who looked even more bug-eyed at the development. “Wish me luck,” Kelsey said as she disappeared through the paper-thin door out into a sunny summer day from her mom’s adolescence.
Everything looked eerily bright: the lime-green grass, the bright-blue sky, and the deep-purple lake. A vintage-looking speedboat was tied up at the end of the fresh and sturdy dock, which looked as if it had just been built. It probably had been. Three teenagers were standing in the shade of a tree, talking and laughing. She recognized her mother immediately.
Almost as tall and broad-shouldered as the boy, her mom was wearing a striped halter top, tiny navy-blue shorts, and platform sandals. Her curly brown hair was wet and fell down her otherwise-exposed back. She was gorgeous, and Kelsey didn’t want to look away, not even long enough to examine her mom’s two companions.
“We’re having a bonfire tomorrow night,” the teenage boy said. “You should both come.”
“That sounds like fun. Doesn’t it, Vinnie?” Kelsey’s mom asked in a lilting, musical tone she had never heard her use before—flirting.
“It does,” the other girl said. That was Mrs. Fletcher—Vinnie, Lavinia—from next door. “But I don’t know if we can make it, Christine. Remember we told Bruce we’d go to that thing?”
As Kelsey’s mom turned her head away from the teenage boy and toward Vinnie, so did Kelsey. Though her mom was vibrant and youthful and at her very prettiest, Kelsey could see that Vinnie was clearly the more striking of the two girls. Petite-featured, petite-bodied, fair-skinned, and with silky, coppery hair parted in the middle, she was like a porcelain doll Kelsey had once coveted in a gift shop. But at that moment, her features looked stormy. What is her problem?
“Oh,” her mom said, her face falling a little. “That’s right. I forgot. Well, maybe next time?”
“Sure. Next time,” the boy said. He had shaggy, feathered dark-brown hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a white polo shirt and too-short shorts and was handsome in a seventies-heartthrob kind of way, if a person was into that kind of thing.
Kelsey did a double take. His blue eyes looked familiar. Is that Dad? Am I witnessing the moment when my parents first met? She tried to reimagine the teenager with graying, shorter hair and about forty extra pounds on his lean frame.
“Well, I’d better go,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you at the beach, I guess.”
“I hope so!” her mom called after him. “Goodbye!”
Kelsey willed her mom or Vinnie to say his name. Goodbye, Charlie! Charles Kingstad? Is that really Dad? But neither of them voiced his name, and the boy was slinking across the lawn before Kelsey could study
him in any further detail. She watched her mom’s blue eyes follow him longingly and Vinnie’s almond eyes flash contemptuously at him.
“What thing are you talking about?” her mom hissed.
But before Kelsey could hear Vinnie’s reply, Melanie was standing beside her. “You broke my one condition. You left me behind,” she said. She sounded half-furious, half on the verge of tears.
“Whoa,” Kelsey said. “You were the one who thought it would be safer to stay in the house. I would’ve been happy for us to stick together.” She tried to tune back in to their mom and Vinnie’s conversation, but Melanie was still talking.
“Well, we need to go now. That’s if we can travel back to our time. I tried to test the porch door, but it’s hard to know if we’ll be able to get back through or be stuck out here. All I know is we have to go into the secret closet again to have a hope of making it back at all. And who knows how much time has passed in our world?”
The idea that time would travel more quickly out there hadn’t occurred to Kelsey. Poor Sprocket—is he anxious and hungry, chewing on everything in sight? Kelsey took one last look at her mom. She wished her mom would look back at her and acknowledge her presence, maybe even reach out and hug her. But she was just as separate and unknowable to Kelsey as she had been throughout much of her life. Maybe that was about to change.
Chapter Seven
“That couldn’t have been Dad,” Melanie said, setting salad plates on the rough, faded surface of the wraparound porch’s outdoor table. She wondered if she’d have time to squeeze in sanding and staining it before the professional photographer came the next week. “Mom and Dad didn’t meet until she was eighteen, remember? At that Harvest Festival mixer? I don’t think Dad visited Lake Indigo until the following summer.”
“Oh, boo, I bet you’re right.” Kelsey poured a generous measure of Sauvignon Blanc into each of their glasses. She looked disappointed for only a second before leaning forward on her elbows mischievously. “So who do you think he was, then? A first love? Mom never mentioned dating anyone before Dad.”
Versions of Her Page 8